Blackstone sells century-old La Quinta resort to British firm

45-acre property with hotel near Palm Springs goes to Henderson Park of London

Blackstone Group's Stephen Schwarzman and the La Quinta Resort & Club at 49-499 Eisenhower Drive in La Quinta (Getty, Mapquest)
Blackstone Group's Stephen Schwarzman and the La Quinta Resort & Club at 49-499 Eisenhower Drive in La Quinta (Getty, Mapquest)

The Blackstone Group has sold its 45-acre La Quinta Resort & Club in the Coachella Valley for $255 million.

The New York-based private equity firm made the sale to Henderson Park, a hedge fund in London, according to Bisnow, which cited Real Capital Analytics. Local property records show the deal was done with a $162-million loan from Morgan Stanley of New York.

The La Quinta property – 22 miles southeast of Palm Springs and a 10 minute drive to the site of the annual Coachella music festival in Indio – has 617 hotel rooms, 98 villas and 190,000 square feet of meeting space. There also are 21 tennis courts and 41 swimming pools, surrounded by world-class golf courses – a number of which Blackstone sold separately in earlier deals.

Hotel guests have access to play all the courses.

The historic golf resort played a part on a season of “The Bachelorette,” and has long hosted PGA tours. When the La Quinta Hotel opened in 1926, the daily green fee for its 9-hole course was $1. It soon became a Hollywood getaway for such stars as Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and Shirley Temple.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Henderson Park was launched in 2016 by Mount Kellett executive Nick Weber, who managed to whip up $500 million in equity while working out of his local Starbucks.

Since then, the firm has been a significant investor in European hotels. It bought the Westin Paris-Vendôme in 2018 for $628 million and is now selling it for close to $913.5 million, according to Bisnow. Last year, it bought a portfolio of 12 Hilton hotels in the United Kingdom, and set up a new platform to manage the business.

The La Quinta deal marks its first on this side of the Atlantic.

[Bisnow] – Dana Bartholomew

Read more